A Twist of Sand

We stood looking at one another across the baleful light of the angled lamp. He ran his eyes slowly over the photostats. His voice was hard, but laced with professional admiration when he spoke after a long scrutiny.

"That's a very fine chart, Geoffrey," he said. "For a coast which has never been mapped, or never been surveyed, I'd say, in fact, it was a masterpiece." He leaned over my soundings to the south-west of the Clan Alpine shoal. "A masterpiece," he repeated slowly, staring hard at me.

"Where are we now?" he went on in the same voice.

I jabbed a pencil at the five and three-quarter fathom mark. "About there. For what it is worth. It could be nine, or three fathoms."

He blenched. Off the Skeleton Coast a ship's position is every skipper's nightmare. It haunts his mind, waking and sleeping; drunk in a ditch ashore, it is his first waking question.

I had known in my heart of hearts that the showdown with John must come. I would have preferred to have chosen the moment. An icy dawn is not the best time for presenting a case, a shaky case at that, to someone who believes in you.

I made up my mind suddenly.

"John," I said briefly. I drew a line on the chart with the ruler. "I intend to go inside this line. Two things may happen. You may find yourself drowning in the next ten minutes. Or you may find yourself facing a fine of £1,000 or five years in gaol."

"Go on," he said tersely.

"What I'm trying to say is simply this, that this ship is now off the diamond area of the Skeleton Coast. For months I have mapped and charted this coast coming home from the fishing grounds, in your watch below. I bought her for that. Trawling is purely a secondary consideration. It also is good cover. Remember how I insisted that I should take the midnight-dawn trick? " He nodded. " Well, I've faked the ordinary chart, but plotted everything in minute detail on my own special chart, the first accurate one ever of the Skeleton Coast.

John looked puzzled. " You may have hoodwinked me, but what of it? That's not a crime. It's no crime to chart a coast."

I laughed harshly. " It's quite clear you haven't read the Diamond Control Act. I'd say it was the finest combination of threats and penalties I've ever seen. This is the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa, John. Out there --- " I gestured beyond the porthole out to starboard   "are the richest unworked diamond fields in the world. It would mean a fine of £1,000 or five years' gaol, or both, for you and me. That's just for being here. There are plenty of other smaller items in the Act, each costing about £500 a time and a couple of years, which you undoubtedly would find on the charge sheet also."

"So what? " said John. " This ship is on the high seas. We're not ashore pinching anyone's diamonds."

"Ever hear of the three-mile territorial limit?" I laughed without humour. "And if that wasn't enough, there was that judgement the other day in the Appeal Court governing the rights to prospect and mine diamonds: high water marks, low water marks, territorial limits, etcetera, etcetera."

John sniffed: "No bloody South African Navy ship would find you anyway." He grinned for the first time.

"You're the most cunning submariner who ever outfoxed a destroyer, and I'd say your hand has lost none of its cunning. Look at this set-up now -- thick fog, a coast where only you know where you are, funk holes everywhere. . . ."

"Thanks for the compliments, John," I retorted. "But you're a little behind the times. Ever hear of this new border patrol the South African Air Force flies at unannounced times ? Long-range Shackletons. I've seen their photographs of the mouth of the Cunene, the first ever taken from the air. They're good. They've got a coat of arms of a bloody great pelican standing on a globe rising out of the sea. I don't want to be snapped up in the beak of that pelican. There's nothing that would stop me afloat, but a Shackleton would take a photograph and -- presto, an exact fix. Inside the three-mile limit. Five years inside for you and me. Irrefutable."

"What are you doing all this for, Geoffrey?" asked John quietly.

"I got kicked out of the Royal Navy -- remember?" I said harshly. "I wouldn't say where I was -- remember? Well, I've got a particular interest in this part of the world. It might have been just an overwhelming compulsion motive in the ordinary course of things, something to justify myself to myself, but since it ties up with the Skeleton Coast, it becomes highly dangerous and highly illegal at the same time. I'm charting this unknown coast rock by rock and shoal by shoal. The compulsion springs from something very deep in my sailor's make-up, and has also something to do with an old man I saw die. In some ways I'm finishing the job he set out to do. But it goes farther than that also, because I have an interest which I may tell you about some time. The immediate point at issue is, though, do you come in on this ? You must make up your own mind."